Managing Resources

This chapter describes the various tasks involved in creating and managing organizational resources in your implementation of Netscape Calendar. Resource management is similar to user management in terms of functionality and administrative controls.

The following topics are dealt with in this chapter:

• "Creating Calendar resources"


• "Managing Calendar resources"


• "Managing resource defaults"


• "Assigning designates"

Creating Calendar resources

A resource is an inanimate object, such as a conference room or a piece of equipment, that has its own calendar. When creating an event in their calendar, users can invite resources in the same way that they invite other users. Resources are managed by local users who act as designates. Resources can either be set up to permit more than one reservation at a time, or on a first-come first-served basis to prevent double-bookings.

Resources can also be used to create a calendar for tracking related enterprise-wide information, such as company holidays or employees' travel schedules. For example, to create a Travel Planner for your organization, add a resource to the node and name it "Travel Planner". Whenever an employee is scheduled to travel, he/she will create an event in his/her personal calendar and invite the resource. The result is a calendar for the resource Travel Planner containing all entries related to employees' travel.

Creating a new resource

1. Select Resource Management | New Resource from the Calendar Server Manager.


2. On the "New Resource" form, enter the information in the displayed fields, ensuring that values are provided for:
• Resource Name


• Resource Number
3. To add the resource to an organizational unit, select from the choices in the drop-down menu following Add New Resource to:. (Note: To create a new organizational unit, select Users & Groups | New Organizational Unit from General Administration and follow the on-line instructions.)


4. Proceed to Step 5 if you want to create only one Calendar resource, or alternatively, follow the procedure for creating several Calendar resources at one time outlined in Step 6.


5. Click Create and Edit Resource if you wish to create only one resource and immediately add it to a Calendar node. A form will be displayed with all of the information in edit boxes for the newly created resource. At the top of the form is the message "The resource has been created but not added to a node" under which there are two more  lines: "<resource name>, <ou>" and "Add resource to a node". Click the hyperlink Add in the previous sentence to proceed to "Adding resources to a node" (documented in the section following).


6. If you plan to create several resources at once, click Create Resource when the form is complete. If the action is successful, the next screen will display a blank "New Resource" form with the message "The Resource <Resource Name> has been added" at the top. Continue to create the desired number of new resources in the same manner, then proceed to the next section to complete the resource creation process by adding the resources to (a) node(s).

Adding resources to a node

1. Select Resource Management | Add Resources to Node from the Calendar Server Manager. In the resource list on the "Add Resources to Node" form, you will see displayed any resources that are not already attached to a Calendar node. To select resources to add to a node, click on an entry to select a single resource, <Ctrl> click on each desired entry to create a subset of the displayed resources, or click Select All to activate the complete list.


2. Select the Node-ID for the node that you wish to add the selected resources to from the pull-down menu under the title Node-ID.


3. Enter the SYSOP  password in the indicated box.


4. Click Add to add the resource(s) to the specified node.

Managing Calendar resources

1. Select Resource Management| Manage Resources from the Calendar Server Manager to open the "Manage Resources" form.


2. To select a resource, follow the same procedure as that detailed in the "Finding User Entries" on-line help for managing users to select a resource. The format and procedure for this action is exactly the same for both users and resources.


3. Make the desired changes to the resource record and click Save Changes to complete the modification.
4. To remove a resource, click Delete Resource.


5. You may also view and modify various Calendar resource attributes from the command line using the unires script. See Appendix G for full instructions on the use of this script.

Managing resource defaults

A Calendar administrator may wish to define a default resource profile prior to adding resources to the database. Changes are applied only as resources are added to the database.

To define a default resource profile:

1. From the Calendar Server Manager, select Resource Management | Manage Resource Defaults to open the "Manage Resource Defaults" form


2. All configuration parameters for the resource profile are displayed under the section heading "GEN".


3. To edit the default profile, click GEN to open the "Section Editor".


4. All configurable parameters are displayed with the default value in an edit box. This value can be changed according to the information and limits defined in the following section "Parameters for resource profile."


5. To make changes to a value, delete the old value and type the new value in the edit box.


6. To return to the default profile or values, click Reset.


7. To add a new parameter, click Add Key(s) and, in the pop-up window, enter the number of parameters  you wish to add. The specified number of boxes will be added to the bottom of the form for the insertion of the new parameters. .


8. To remove a parameter, click Delete Key and enter the key to be deleted in the pop-up window.


9. Once you have made all required editing changes, click Save Changes.

Parameters for resource profile

The information that can be specified is:

• Display preferences


• Refresh frequency, notification and reminder preferences


• Viewing and scheduling rights available to users


• Time zones different from that of the node


• List of admin groups that new resources will be added to


• List of persons who can work as designates for the resource

Assigning designates

Designate and other access rights are assigned using the default resource profile when the resource is added to the node. They can also be set later using the Netscape Calendar Client to log in as the resource and modify Access Rights.